What “Golden Age”?

Abstract

In this chapter Phillip Lopate offers a dissent from the main themes of The New Hollywood Revisited, suggesting that the movement did not live up to the standards set by the best of the classic studio era and foreign art cinemas. The New Hollywood, in Lopate’s estimation, tapped into a zeitgeist dominated by the anti-war movement and the counter-culture that too often surrendered to a didactic, simplistic moralism. He acknowledges that there were wonderful passages in these films, with an energetic, cinematic daring. But the films were as well mired in a willful confusion and irresolution. In this introspective essay, Lopate assesses the styles of Cassavetes, Lumet and Altman, among others, and finds much to praise, despite his enduring wariness of New Hollywood cinema.